{"id":6322,"date":"2017-09-11T18:45:45","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T22:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6322"},"modified":"2017-09-11T18:45:45","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T22:45:45","slug":"caught-between-police-and-gangs-rio-de-janeiro-residents-are-dying-in-the-line-of-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6322","title":{"rendered":"Caught Between Police and Gangs, Rio De Janeiro Residents Are Dying in the Line of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Aggressive police patrolling of Rio\u2019s poor favela neighbourhoods has turned streets into battlegrounds, with innocent bystanders in the middle. Reuters\/Bruno Domingos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Rio de Janeiro, where murder rates this year have soared to their highest levels in a decade<\/a>, violence stalks even the youngest residents.<\/p>\n

In July an unborn child was struck by a stray bullet, which severely damaged his spine and perforated his lungs. Doctors saved his mother, Claudinia Santos, but little Arthur did not make it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His killing sparked outrage, laying bare a terrifying danger facing Rio\u2019s citizens: death by crossfire. That\u2019s what happens when gun battles between heavily armed police, drug trafficking groups and militias rage in a city\u2019s streets.<\/p>\n

In 2016, more than 5,000 people were murdered in Rio<\/a>, among them scores of people killed by stray bullets.<\/p>\n

War on the poor<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to a snapshot of 2017 civil police data<\/a>, so-called \u201cstray bullet incidents\u201d are most frequent in Rio\u2019s poor north and west zones, home to many favela<\/em> neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

At the time of Arthur\u00b4s murder, authorities in Rio had already reported at least 632 unintentional gun-related killings and injuries in 2017<\/a>. The majority of the victims lived in socially marginalised areas, and consisted chiefly of women, children and older people.<\/p>\n

This demographic profile reflects similar trends uncovered in epidemiological studies conducted in both the United States<\/a> and Colombia<\/a>, where data on stray bullet incidents has also shown that most victims tend to be young, old or female.<\/p>\n

This profile diverges notably from that of the typical perpetrator, who in both Rio and the US<\/a> are predominantly men 15 to 29 years old<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other words, those caught in the crossfire have nothing to do with the events that generated it; they are, in the most literal sense, innocent bystanders.<\/p>\n

A brief history of violence<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stray bullets are not a new problem in Rio. When crime rates peaked here some two decades ago, hundreds more people were unintentionally shot each year.<\/p>\n

In the mid-1990s, one former mayor memorably described the bullet-riddled city as a \u201ctropical Bosnia\u201d<\/a> and hinted that an undeclared war<\/a> was underway. Back then, fearful residents commonly reinforced their windows and walls with steel plates and concrete<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Starting about five years ago, violence in Rio began to ease somewhat. As the city\u2019s controversial Police Pacification Units, or UPPs, reclaimed some of city\u2019s favelas<\/em> from gangs, they helped murder rates decrease by 65% between 2009 and 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the reforms at the heart of the UPPs \u2013 neighbourhood occupations, proximity policing and use of non-lethal force<\/a> \u2013 began to deteriorate after the 2016 Rio Olympics, and crime is once again spiking in Rio\u2019s favelas<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Crossfire deaths are just one consequence. These communities suffer acutely from all forms of violence, including police brutality<\/a>, which has been growing in frequency and severity<\/a> since the UPP\u2019s collapse.<\/p>\n

I believe that\u2019s because organised crime, stray bullets and aggressive policing are mutually reinforcing. Pitting police against gangs<\/a> in an overt turf war has spawned a mini arms race, with all sides \u2013 from drug dealers to beat officers \u2013 resorting to ever-higher calibre weaponry.<\/p>\n

With the recent arrival of 8,500 soldiers to go after gangs and illegal weapons in Rio de Janeiro, the twelfth military deployment there since the early 1990s<\/a>, the violence could escalate further still. Brazil\u2019s minister of defence has described the armed forces as an \u201canaesthetic\u201d for the city.<\/p>\n

On July 2 2017, the Rio de Janeiro state civil police announced that 632 people had died in crossfire this year<\/a>. On average, then, the official statistic is that a Rio resident is hit by a stray bullet every seven hours.<\/p>\n

Caught in the fogo cruzado<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The actual number is likely considerably higher.<\/p>\n

Most law enforcement and public health specialists limit the application of the term to instances when a bullet escapes the immediate scene of a shooting and results in a fatal or non-fatal injury. This narrow definition leaves out the many instances where shots are fired but no casualties are reported.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the local newspaper Extra challenged the way the city\u2019s Institute for Public Safety (ISP) counted stray bullets, accusing officials of dramatically under-reporting<\/a>. Applying the government\u2019s categorisation scheme, reporters found just 160 stray bullet incidents between January and June 2014, leaving another reported 39 crossfire deaths and 194 stray bullet injuries uncounted.<\/p>\n

The ISP has now partnered with local academics and the Rio de Janeiro state civil police to refine how it registers these incidents<\/a>, but commentators disagree on whether the new definition is any better<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The media, too, under-reports on stray bullet incidents. According to a 2016 United Nations-sponsored study<\/a> that tracked the \u201cstray bullet incidents\u201d documented in news outlets across Latin America, Brazil ranked first for crossfire-related injuries and deaths in 2014 and 2015, with 197 incidents (98 deaths and 115 injuries).<\/p>\n

It was followed by Mexico (116 cases) and Colombia (101 cases). In all three homicide-beset nations<\/a>, this is surely a low estimate.<\/p>\n

To fill these information gaps, activists in Rio de Janeiro have developed apps. Amnesty Brazil\u2019s Fogo Cruzado (Crossfire)<\/a> has reported more than 2,000 shooting in the last 120 days, an average of 16 a day.<\/p>\n

Press play below to see all reported shots fired in Rio from January through June 2017:<\/p>\n

But crowd-sourcing platforms have their weaknesses, too. They rely on citizens to file reports online, meaning better coverage in more tech-savvy neighbourhoods. They also capture all incidents, both verified and unverified.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t shoot<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ambiguous defitions and under-counting mean that violence analysts like me don\u2019t actually know whether crossfire killings are on the rise.<\/p>\n

But we do know this: Rio\u2019s stray bullets are no accident<\/a> \u2013 they\u2019re the predictable outcome of a public security policy that privileges aggressive policing over prevention. Too often police in Rio are trained to shoot first and (maybe) ask questions later. When threatened, officers routinely fire off a disproportionate number of rounds<\/a> \u2013 often at close range<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And when trigger-happy cops<\/a> wield powerful assault rifles, as Rio\u2019s do, they can kill or injure people up to three kilometres away.<\/p>\n

Drug trafficking factions do precisely the same thing, with predictably deadly outcomes for bystanders.<\/p>\n

Limiting confrontations in dense urban areas, including through super-targeted \u201chot spot\u201d policing<\/a>, could dramatically reduce the gun battles that end up claiming innocent lives.<\/p>\n

Such reforms would require better police training and more oversight of errant officers, though, something that Rio\u2019s underfunded and overstressed police force cannot do without able leadership and additional resources.<\/p>\n

There are several other ways to limit stray bullet incidents: passing and enforcing stricter gun regulations<\/a>, stemming the leakage of illegal weapons onto the street from public and private security forces<\/a>, marking and tracking police bullets<\/a> \u2013 even just advising people against firing celebratory shots in the air.<\/p>\n

\"TheIn the absence of such emergency measures, favela<\/em> residents will have to keep dodging bullets while the rest of us look on in horror.<\/p>\n

Robert Muggah<\/a>, Associate lecturer, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Rio de Janeiro, where murder rates this year have soared to their highest levels in a decade, violence stalks even the youngest residents. In July an unborn child was struck by a stray bullet, which severely damaged his spine and perforated his lungs. Doctors saved his mother, Claudinia Santos, but little Arthur did not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":6323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6324,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6322\/revisions\/6324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}